Enduring Beacons: Documenting America’s Lighthouses

Happy National Lighthouse Day! To celebrate, I’d like to share an exhibit I put together for the Park View Gallery at Glen Echo Park, Maryland. If you live in the D.C. metro area, the show will be up until August 26, 2017.

The contemporary images are mine; most of the historic images are from the National Archives.

Although Massachusetts Colony allocated funds for its construction in 1787, Portland Head was completed by the Federal government in 1791. (Maine became a state in 1820.) National Archives image shows tower ca. 1859 before it was raised in 1864.

Montauk Point, New York, 2012.Montauk Point Lighthouse was authorized for the eastern end of New York’s Long Island by the second U.S. Congress in 1792 with the support of President George Washington. Designed and built by John McComb, Jr., the station was completed in 1796. The station was transferred to the Montauk Historical Society in 1996 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012. Historic image from National Archives

Established at the mouth of the Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1883, Drum Point Lighthouse was one of many screwpile-type lighthouses that assisted navigation on the Chesapeake Bay. Decommissioned in 1962, the lighthouse was moved to nearby Calvert Marine Museum, Solomons, Maryland, in 1975. Today it is open to the public as one of the Museum’s exhibits. Photo courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

The first lighthouse on Bodie Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina was established in 1847. The second tower was destroyed in the Civil War. The current 164-foot tower was completed in 1871. The tower, located in Cape Hatteras National Seashore, was transferred from the U.S. Coast Guard to the National Park Service in 2000. A nomination for listing on the National Register Historic Places was prepared in 2001 using documentation in the National Archives. The lighthouse subsequently underwent a multi-million dollar restoration.

Cape Hatteras Light Station, also on the Outer Banks, was originally established in 1803. The original tower was deemed inadequate for marking the dangerous Diamond Shoals offshore, so it was raised to 150 feet and a superior Fresnel lens installed in 1859. The present tower, the tallest in the U.S. at 208 feet, was completed in 1870. Transferred to the National Park Service in 1937, storms and erosion eventually threatened the tower’s foundation until it was moved a half mile inland in 1999. NPS photos by Candace Clifford

Michigan’s Point Betsie Lighthouse was established on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan in 1858. The station was automated in 1983 but Coast Guard personnel continued to live there until 1996. The 1882 keeper letter was found in the National Archives.

Heceta Head Light Station, Oregon, was lit with a first-order Fresnel lens in 1894. The lens, manufactured by the Chance Brothers, in Birmingham, England, has 640 two-inch prisms, arranged in eight panels with bullseyes in the center. The lens was disassembled, dismantled, restored, and reassembled in the tower in 2001. It continues as an active aid to navigation. NPS photos by Candace Clifford

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Comments

Outstanding, Candace, thank you for sharing this. I wish I could see the entire exhibit. How fortunate we are that you have photographed lighthouses over the years and organized your work. And we are also fortunate that you have shared your work and research in an artistic way.